Heroes or Survivors?

The 82 crewmen of U.S.S. Pueblo were officially welcomed as heroes when they came home after eleven months as captives of Communist North Korea. At the same time, the Navy warned them that they would have to face a court of inquiry. Five admirals were named to investigate the surrender of the electronic spy ship and its crew's conduct in prison, where they signed much-publicized "confessions" to crimes against North Korea's sovereignty.

Could not Pueblo's crew have defended or at least scuttled their ship to keep its secrets out of Communist hands? The question bothered Georgia's Senator Richard Russell, the influential outgoing chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Finally last week, he raised the doubts that have bothered many Americans. "It is a very sad and tragic affair," he said. "We presented the Russians with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of research in communications." Russell said that he wanted to see the orders issued to Pueblo's skipper, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher. "These men are being hailed as heroes," he added. "They are heroes in the sense that they survived the imprisonment. But they did sign a great many statements that did not reflect any great heroism in my mind. I'll have to investigate further to see just what hero-type things they performed."

Terror and Torture. The Navy was saving the Pueblo's story for the court, which is expected to convene at Coronado, Calif., later this month, and it ordered the crew to say nothing. Meanwhile, it awarded ten Purple Hearts to crewmen wounded in the high-seas hijacking. Last week, too, after Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford demanded an investigation of the ugly tales of beatings inflicted on the Pueblo's men, the Navy permitted two sailors to give a public accounting of terror and torture as prisoners of North Korea.

"I was beaten with a two-by-two that was about four feet long," said Quartermaster First Class Charles Benton Law Jr., 27. "I was in a kneeling position on a deck in front of this desk. The guard was striking me across the shoulders and back with it. This stick broke in half on one of the blows, and he kept on using the two halves he had until it ended up in four pieces. So he left and came back with a piece of four-by-four. I assumed the same position, kneeling on the deck, and received a few blows on the shoulders and back." Law was then kicked, punched and cuffed by his guards. Altogether, he estimated, he was hit 250 times or more. "I didn't bother to count them all."

Few Psychic Bruises. Radioman Second Class Lee Roy Hayes, a gaunt 26-year-old, admitted that "I was not beat as bad as many." Nevertheless, X rays taken in San Diego showed that his jaw had been broken. One of the chief tormentors was a North Korean colonel nicknamed "The Bear," who worked over Hayes and the rest of the crew. "One day they treat you nice, and they are your big brothers," Hayes explained. "The next day, for no reason, it would be the opposite. Everyone was kept in terror, waiting to be beat. That was the worst part--there was nothing you could do but sit there and wait."

The crew came through their ordeal with surprisingly few psychic bruises. "They were trying to create doubts in our minds about our country and about our religion," says Hayes. Law was assured that the American people had forgotten Pueblo. When the freed crewmen were granted a brief New Year liberty from questioning by intelligence officers, only Bucher was restricted to a San Diego Naval hospital room, recuperating from nervous and physical exhaustion.

Happier Than Hell. Law was beaten on Dec. 12, only eleven days before the crew's release, when the Communists discovered they had been outwitted by their prisoners. When a North Korean photographer snapped eight grinning sailors last October, nobody noticed that three of the captives were wigwagging an internationally recognized signal of obscenity with their middle fingers.

Unknowing Communist functionaries used the picture to advertise the home comforts of their jail. When a horse laugh heard around the world apprised them of their gaffe, the jailers turned on their hapless prisoners. Although all the men in the picture were tortured, they were elated by their feat. "About everybody in the crew was happier than hell," Law recounted, "because everybody could see what we were trying to do." Making fools of their captors and signaling their view of North Korea's crude propaganda had made the exercise worthwhile.

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